Magnetic Fidelity New Year Newsletter 2019
Happy New Year!
As always, 2018 was another exceptionally busy year, full of exciting projects and lovely music.
Naxatras released their third album, titled "III", to much critical acclaim and an astounding number of sales. The vinyl record version is a masterpiece, a triple gatefold LP of exceptional quality in every respect, from the artwork to the music to the sound quality to the smoothness of the edge trimming and flatness of the records themselves. There was also a special colored vinyl version edition, in ice-blue, containing a glow-in-the-dark poster (designed by Chris RW), limited to 500 copies, which sold out so fast it wasn't even funny! The masters for the vinyl record manufacturing were cut at Magnetic Fidelity by J. I. Agnew, directly from the analog master tapes, on a 100% analog signal path. The recording itself was done entirely in the analog domain, on 1/4" tape, making this record a purely analog production, from start to finish.
The success of III inspired us to make a somewhat bold move and make the album available on 1/4" tape as master tape copies, duplicated in real time (15 ips) directly form the master tapes, purely in the analog domain. The planning and concept was developed by Sabine, demonstrating her versatility with making an amazing photoshooting of the reels. Since we accumulated a lot of her great pictures by now, we found it is time to start an instagram account, even though none of us uses a smartphone! If you still insist on landline telephone, we are certainly thinking along the same lines... However, instagram is a popular platform for sharing pictures, so here we go: https://www.instagram.com/magneticfidelity/ (opens in new tab).
During 2018, we also cut the masters for the Naxatras EP, which was pressed on a splatter clear-purple-white vinyl record, which sold out at once, to be subsequently repressed as a different edition on marbled muscle-red vinyl. The awesome shots at an old railway station were another one of Sabine's inspired ideas!
We also conducted a recording session with "Drunk Confident" from the UK, whose album is rumored to be titled "Live chicken, dead fish and slippers", in honor of a certain industrious mobile salesman... He claimed the session is having a cathartic effect on him, so stay tuned for some proper analog high quality experimental musical poetry mind twist!
There were a variety of projects that came in for mastering throughout the year. A particularly notable example was "Overseas", an impressive megaproject of an album by "White Coven" from Spain, for which we cut masters for vinyl record manufacturing, did CD authoring and high definition digital download masters.
Our engineer, J. I. Agnew wrote a paper titled "An investigation of motional feedback disk recording system design", which was accepted for publication on the November 2018 issue (http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=19872) of the prestigious Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, following a peer review process. It details his research and development work on disk mastering systems of high performance, including his highly innovative circuit design work, resulting in a cutting amplifier capable of outperforming the Neumann SAL74. This involved many years of preparation and intense writing, correcting and editing. Sabines faithful assistance in experiments, measurements, editing and proofreading was indispensable to make this paper a success.
In the meantime, Agnew Analog Reference Instruments (http://www.agnewanalog.com) was involved in the development of electronics for disk recording systems as well as various mechanical parts and the restoration and modification of several disk recording lathes from Nashville, TN, to Sydney, Australia, via Europe! Perhaps the most impressive development at the Agnew Analog laboratory, however, is a unique stereophonic cutter head, invented by J. I. Agnew for professional mastering work.
The website of Agnew Analog was set up by Sabine this year and is still under construction. We are aiming to create an online portal collecting all technical information about Disk Mastering and Record Cutting under one roof in a properly sorted way. Feel welcome to contribute your pictures and reports to the portal by sending us an email. The website also contain a blog, where we are publishing articles in irregular intervals, whenever something comes up that might be of interest (http://www.agnewanalog.com/blog).
We are expecting a lot of fascinating projects to materialize in 2019. Stay tuned for more! Thank you for all your support and your faith in our products and services. We will keep on striving for quality, along with the friendly customer service you are used to receiving from us!
Happy music making!
J. I. and Sabine
Receive our Newsletter at your email address!
